The
composer and pianist George Walker was born in Washington, D.C. June
27, 1922, is featured at AfriClassical.com
and has a website athttp://georgetwalker.com/ He made history in 1996 as the first African-American Pulitzer Prize
Winner in Music. George
Walker has recorded prolifically; ArkivMusic.com lists 27 CDs under
his name. An impressive number are devoted entirely to his
compositions, as is the case for George
Walker: Great American Orchestral Works, Vol. 3 (2012).
The composer's most recent release is his first on the Delos Music
label, and was released on May 28, 2013.

Jan
Swafford writes in the liner notes: “The works on this recording
are all American and all essentially songful.” “George Walker is
a composer of African American/West Indian background whose highly
personal Cello Sonata defies categories, but who retains a subtle
undercurrent of black American tradition.” “George Walker gave
his first piano recital at age 14 and went on to a spectacular
academic and performing career that started at Oberlin (from which he
graduated first in his class at 18) and moved to Curtis, where his
piano teachers included Rudolf Serkin and his composition teacher was
Rosario Scalero, who taught Barber.”

Swafford
then remarks on George Walker's string of successes following his
graduation from Curtis, “After graduating, Walker went on to break
the musical color line in one venue after another: the first black
musician to solo with the Philadelphia Orchestra and to get a
doctorate from Eastman, among other distinctions. Following Barber's
lead with Adagio
for Strings, Walker
took his Lyric
for Strings
out of his first string quartet and it became one of the most
performed of American orchestral pieces. He has published over 90
works and recorded widely as a pianist.”

Jan
Swafford informs us: “Feldman considers
Walker's Cello Sonata to be one of the lesser-known masterpieces of
the American cello repertoire.” We are told of the work “It
begins with a bustling figure in the piano from which the cello's
theme rises, with its mingling of nervous energy and wistfulness.
That is contrasted with a poignant second theme, perhaps touched both
by blues and Brahms. There follows a development with a growing
stress and passion that carries into a driving recapitulation.” Of
the second movement we are told: “Feldman is reminded of
Shostakovich here, and there is a distant, melancholy echo of the
blues.”

Swafford
concludes: “Ultimately, the Walker Cello Sonata escapes categories
of American or African-American, Romantic or Modern. It is simply
and memorably itself.”

Each
of the five George Gershwin pieces is adapted or arranged by Emmanuel
Feldman. The two Copland works are arranged for cello and piano by
the composer. The compositions of Samuel Barber and George Walker
are performed as written. The recording as a whole is a coherent and
very enjoyable excursion into the music of four American composers.

Disclosure:A
review copy of this CD was provided by the record label.Comment by email:Hello Bill, Thanks very much for the review. Best regards. George [George Walker]